Be Very Careful When Someone Says Something's 'Inevitable'

So the New York Mets lick their wounds, and the experts lick their predictions.

Few will recall how they called the Mets unstoppable. The team that owned first place in the National League East almost from the beginning of the season, but not on the last day of the season.

That's when it counted. And that's when it didn't happen.

Experts didn't plan on that. Neither, I'm sure, did the Mets.

But experts, like the Mets, get things wrong.

Experts who said Jimmy Carter had no chance. And after a rocky first year, Ronald Reagan had no second term.

It seems silly now. It was taken as gospel then.

So lesson to all now.

Be very careful when someone says something's inevitable. It rarely is.

History is defined not by things we expected, but by things we did not.

We know that. But we forget that.

Like the boxer playing it safe because he's ahead on all the judges' scorecards going into the final round, then ends up getting knocked out in the final round. Like IBM dismissing Microsoft in the 1970s. And Microsoft dismissing Google in the 1990s.

Champs have a way of looking like chumps only because they stopped acting like champs. Believing their press, because that's all they see in the press.

Until they don't. And the game plays on. Only this time without them playing in it.